The Tributes are taken early in the morning, most of their support teams seeming in good cheer as they dress them in warm clothes, getting them to their tubes. There is obvious comfort in the familiar for the prep teams, and they chatter with, or in some cases, over the heads of their Tributes as they get them ready and load them up.

20

19

18…

If the Tributes could see the area they are passed up into, they would see a deeply overgrown, dilapidated town green, with a large bandstand rotting away in the middle. The spoils of the cornucopia are not gathered in one spot, instead scattered throughout the thigh high grass and weeds around the town green.

Around the edge of the green, the old business stand a silent sentry, looming out of the fog as it thins and winds into them, providing much desired cover.

8

7

6…

But the Tributes cannot see the ground around them. The fog, thicker even than it will be in the rest of the arena, makes the world small around them. The sound of the count down echoes strangely, the tributes seeming too close as the fog brings sounds of their breath, their coughing, the snap of twigs under their feet right to ears of the other Tributes. But with the fog bringing visibility down to only a few feet, it's hard to tell what is a true danger, and what is only the fog playing tricks on them,.

3

2

1

The gong rings out, and the countdown's voice announces "the Arena is now open". The Games have begun.

Clara

Clara's seen enough footage from previous arenas to know what's going to happen. She has a basic plan in place to dart off the platform as soon as the arena opens and grab things for basic survival so that she can try to lie low. Sadly, fog was never part of the plan, and throws it out the window since she can't see a damn thing. The best thing she can do is listen to her instincts and what they're telling her is to run away as fast as she can.

Instead she finally unfreezes and dashes into the fray, hoping to find food or a water bottle or anything that could possibly be useful.

Toward the edges of the Cornucopia

The lowered visor means Alex Murphy looks like he's taking this pretty well. When he swivels to look left and right at the Tributes next to them, searching for a familiar face, his mouth is pressed into an unreadable line.

Which is just as well, because Alex is having those adrenaline rushes where he'd have Jello knees and be checking for exits, all the while hoping he didn't get shot today. There's a difference between getting that feeling back in Detroit, where he knows the lay of the land, criminal-wise, and here, fighting to see through a sea of fog. Thinking for a second that he’d failed Natasha. Getting a vague impression there might be buildings. He catches a glance of blonde hair far off in the distance, has time to think Is that Clara - and -

3 - 2 - 1.

Alex jolts off the platform, staggering as he piles to the ground. It takes a few steps to remember how to run again, the suit screwing up all the instincts like basic walking he took for granted. His feet hit the grass with these dull thuds he knows aren't going to help. So much for stealth. He lurches for the Cornucopia's shadow, arms pumping. Buildings materialize out of the fog, what looks like Smalltown USA if it'd been abandoned for a few decades taking shape. Lots of green, lots of rotting wood.

He reaches the Cornucopia, his HUD telling him weather conditions were "less than optimal" and [THERMAL PROCESSING - OFFLINE] [REALTIME THREAT ANALYSIS – OFFLINE]. Alex can’t figure out how to clear the error messages from his peripheral. There’s a point where he goes screw it, and focuses on getting anything. He’ll worry about what’s inside later, Alex stooping and snatching a bag and taking off in a random direction through the fog soup.

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The moment she sees the houses in the distance, Clara knows she most likely ran in the wrong direction and probably isn't going to get a damn thing. But at least she's alive for the time being, that's what really matters.

A thudding off in the distance catches her attention, though she can't see where it's coming from with how dense the fog is. She momentarily considers stopping and trying to figure out who or what it is until she remembers the clips of the beginning of previous arenas. How people were slaughtered by their competition. She doesn't want that to be her. So she keeps moving, noting the fact that the sound is just getting louder and that there's a person's silhouette appearing in the mist. At least she thinks it's a person, she can't be sure. And it's coming fast. She stops and manages to get out of the way, noticing the briefest flash of silver and is about to run off when she hears him say her name.

Clara feels as if her heart's leapt into her throat as she slowly turns to face him. Alex is miles away from the way he was the last time she saw him, the matte black exchanged for silver and the fact that he sounds so much more like himself than he did as he left the station.

She really doesn't want to know what it says about her subconscious that she's dreaming about being yanked away from home, spending a few days to deal with that and mentally prepare for a death match while grieving over Alex, and then finding him also fighting in said death match.

Even if this is a terrible nightmare that her brain's cooked up as a way to deal with her grief, there's a selfish part of her that's simply enjoying the fact that the version of Alex in front of her is closer to the man she knew and loved than the version of him that's popped up in her other nightmares as of late.

"Hi baby," she finally manages to get out, almost completely at a loss about what to say.

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A weird feeling washes over him, a mix of relief to hear his wife’s voice only to realize she’s in the middle of a death match.

“Hi,” Alex says, voice taut, sounding like a stranger’s. He acts. Doesn’t think about it. Just reacts, like all the times he’d been shot at – only instead of just his life on the line, it’s Clara’s too, and he doesn’t stop to think about weight. That he can’t lift her and run at a good clip. What he does is picture picking up Clara and hauling her to safety.

It happens fast, Alex watching past the error messages as if someone else is controlling his arm. His hand comes out, loops around Clara’s waist, and sweeps his wife into the crook of his elbow. There’s no strain. No tension in muscles or his back. It’s as easy as picking up a book and it would scare him, any other day. Alex doesn’t give himself that kind of time. Without another word, he takes off into the fog again. Fissures open up in the street as if there’s been an earthquake, tall weeds poking out the cracks. Alex clears them as the visor tells him it’s "rerouting", whatever that’s supposed to mean, his breathing easy as he leaves the Cornucopia behind and abandoned cars begin to pop up here and there. A forgotten umbrella. A suitcase spilled open like an afterthought.

More and more buildings resolve out of the fog bank. Alex goes for a two-story one, the door so damaged that he doesn’t even need to kick it open. A generous nudge of his shoulder and it swings open on rusty hinges. Alex finally sets his wife down. Something twists in his shoulder and gives a soft purr.

“Better barricade the door, check if anyone got in here before us.” What Alex really wants to do is run his hand over Clara’s cheek, let her know that despite the suit, he’s still him. Tell her that he’ll get her out of here. But Alex is going into what Clara called Cop Mode right now and that means checking the exits, clearing any corners where any punk with a trigger-finger and luck could tag you. “Stay close to me.”

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There are so many things Clara can think of that she wants to say to him. I love you, I miss you, You died and I don't know what I'm supposed to do or how to tell David being the first three to really come to mind. She's about to say something when Alex scoops her up and starts running.

He's faster than her (he always has been, she used to rib him about slowing down because she could never keep up with him and his ridiculously long legs), faster than she remembers. Which is the only reason she doesn't yell at him to put her down once she shakes off the shock from being snatched up so easily, as if she were a ragdoll instead of a person (she knows his strength shouldn't surprise her as much as it does. She remembers the email Dr. Norton had sent her right after Alex had been okayed to come home from China and that there was a mention that she'd need to be patient with Alex when he was at home as he adjusted to his new strength. The fact that the email had been for nothing, considering he had only come home once before she lost him again, hurt more than she could say).

Before she knows it, they're inside a house and she's back on her feet. Clara almost thinks they might be able to take a moment and talk or at least not hop right onto the next thing. Even though she knows that, logically, they need to so that they have a safe, defensible spot for the time being, she'd love a moment to just wrap her head around this newest curveball her dreamscape's decided to throw at her.

"I don't think anyone could've gotten here faster than we did." The fact that, damaged as it may've been, the fact that the door was closed is a pretty good sign of that. And, as much as she respects his ability to slip into Cop Mode at a moment's notice, right now she doesn't need Detective Alex Murphy of DCPD, she needs Alex, her husband. "Can we just stop for a moment? Please?"

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The visor swings her way, emotionless, the mouth under it parted slightly like Alex is surprised.

“Watch the windows. We can talk while I work.”

He starts to slide the Cornucopia bag from his shoulder – has to work it off him when it gets stuck on armor plating – and hands it to her. She could go through that, see what they got. He’ll make sure no Tributes come gunning through the front door.

It’s not the way he would’ve had this reunion if it was up to him. Ideally she wouldn’t see him in this rig, this damn suit that makes him think he’s not even human whenever he catches reflections of the thing. Hell, she shouldn’t even be here! Alex turns, glancing at his wife with her hair sticking out of the pony tail it’s been swept up in, trying to read her face. After a moment, he steps away and picks up the heavy couch from the living room. It might be dusted with a layer of moss but it’s still pretty heavy. Or it should be. He’d eyeballed it as at least over a hundred pounds, the kind you just hired movers for and let them deal with it, and yet he’s able to lift it with about as much trouble as Clara.

Alex turns it over, the servos in his arms whirring as he props it up against the door. That thing won’t be budging. Hopefully.

Every now and then he’ll glance at Clara silently, wondering what to say. She recognized him despite the armor, despite the visor getting in the way, and he has to wonder if she knows how he got like this. There’s not much he can do about the windows right now aside from checking the locks, which seem to be rusted shut, and hoping he can board them up if he can find a hammer and nails. The backdoor to what might’ve been a garage has collapsed on itself. No one’s coming through there, at least.

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That's always been the problem with the two of them as a couple, they can both stubborn as hell. Pigheaded even. And she wants to tell him No, we can sit down and talk now like civilized people and have a conversation where he can't just hang up on her or speed away because he needs to get to work. Except, considering the fact that he handed her his (surprisingly heavy) bag and has already begun moving the couch far easily than he has any right to, she knows she's lost this round.

So Clara accepts her defeat and sits on the dusty floor to begin taking inventory of what he managed to grab. There's water, not a lot, but enough that they can probably make it last a couple days if they really stretch it out. A collapsible shovel with a surprisingly heavy metal blade and some scissors, both of which could probably be used as weapons in a pinch. Candles, bleach, some wire, and a fire starting kit that looks like a descendant of the one in their garage.

She glances up and notices that the couch is in place against the door and Alex is examining the locks on the windows.

"I thought I had lost you," Clara says quietly as she examines the scissors. There are other things she knows need to be said, probably on both sides, but that's the first thing that manages to make it out of her mouth.

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Alex turns toward Clara, a little frown behind his visor. The possibility he might get killed on the job was always there, why she waited up for him or she expected a text to let her know hey, I didn’t get shot in the face today so she wasn’t up every night.

“I’m fine,” Alex tries to ignore the big graphene elephant in the room making clicks and purrs. “I’m okay.”

He’s aware that’s not the point because that’s obvious. He’s repeating himself. His face is there. But even Alex doesn’t know how bad it is under the suit and she might not know either. He blows out a sigh, reaching up out of habit to run a hand through his hair before he remembers he doesn’t even know if he has hair under the suit. His hand clanks against the visor, the frowning deepening as he drops his hand. Right, yeah. That. The visor finally slides back from his face: same stress lines, something behind the brown eyes instead of that blankness that had looked right at Clara at the press conference that, to Alex, hasn’t happened.

She’s laid out the stuff in the floor: shovel, scissors, water and some other stuff that, he hopes, can help keep Clara alive. The thing if Alex is used to roughing it, to an extent. But doing it in the middle of a city he’s lived in all his life is totally different. Knowing his wife’s at home and he’s got a kid and taxes and at the end of the day, it’s a job. It’s not some game. Alex tries again, working to keep his voice level for both their sakes.

“They, uh, they said this thing,” Alex gestures at the suit, his wrist rotating instead of flopping like it should’ve, “It’s like life support or something. So I’m not going anywhere.”

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Clara resists the urge to point out that no, he isn't fine or okay. Neither of them are. Neither of them should be, considering the situation they've been put in. Had it been six months ago, she would have done so until Alex finally spilled, especially since every time he said he was fine or okay in that tone of voice, things were almost always anything but. The only thing that stops her is that she feels like she needs to walk on eggshells when it comes to certain subjects involving him these days, not that she would know how much she actually needs to do so when actually talking to him.

Instead she puts the scissors down, stands up, and walks over to him, locking her eyes onto Alex's the moment his visor goes up. Despite everything, a small, relieved ghost of a smile blooms across her lips as soon as she sees that there's a spark of life in his eyes that wasn't there the last time she properly looked at him face-to-face. That smile mostly falters the moment he brings up the suit.

"Yeah, it's something like that," It isn't the suit that makes her smile fall. While she obviously wishes that things were the way they were before the bombing, she had done enough research on her own in the months afterward to know that what Dr. Norton was offering was Alex's best chance at having something resembling the life he led before. Sure, she still hasn't completely adjusted to seeing him like this in person, but she knows enough about it to know that it's, essentially, as much a part of him as his eyes are or his hair (and so many other things, though she refuses to acknowledge that part right now) had been.

But the fact that he's talking about the suit like it's totally new to him is, if she's being honest, a little terrifying. How can he not know? The only time he came home, he knew what he could do and what had happened to him. What had been done to him (and that she had signed off on it). "Alex, what's the last thing you remember before you woke up in the Capitol?"

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Alex doesn’t realize how much he’d been bracing himself for Clara’s reaction until he locks eyes with her and the visor isn’t between them anymore. She doesn’t recoil. She talks to him like normal. She searches his face and whatever she sees, she seems to be mostly okay with, if that slight quirk of her mouth is anything to go by. He’d like to say he relaxes, but he doesn’t: rig he’s in is as rigid as before.

His eyebrows draw together as he thinks back. “Coming home, tucking David into bed. About to,” he pauses, not feeling like he’s down with discussing their sex life right now. “Kissing you. The damn car was acting up again, so I went outside to deal with it. Why?”

It’s pretty cut and dry, except he doesn’t see any kicking point where he could get so badly injured he’d need some Star Trek suit to stay alive. Or how they stuck him in this thing and then shipped him off to a place that looks like it’s on another planet. Granted, he could’ve been sedated for that last bit, but still. If Clara is doing what he did when he woke up in the Capitol, trying to sniff around for patterns, clues, she won’t get anything all that helpful from his end. Alex glances out the window, where the dirt on the glass is at its thinnest, and all he can see is fog and more fog. The few times he gets the impressions of shadows flitting past makes a muscle in his jaw tighten.

The other Tributes are still out there. And according to some of the footage he’s seen of the past Arenas – he wishes he hadn’t – any of them could easily take out his wife.

Alex moves to stand between Clara and the window. As creepy, uncomfortable and plain weird as this suit is, the one thing going for it is that it’s built like a tank.

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What Alex remembers, or more importantly, doesn't remember, is a punch to the gut. Enough that whatever's left of Clara smile disappears completely. She doesn't know how to say...any of it really. It was one of the things she was thankful to Dr. Norton for, other than saving Alex. He had saved her from the monumental task of delivering the bad news.

Clara's never been very good at breaking bad news to people. She had gotten better at it over the past few months, what with having to give David and various friends and family members updates about Alex since that night. But for the most part, except for David and sometimes Jack, she only had to break the news over the phone and didn't have to worry about physically keeping her composure. All she usually had to worry about was keeping her voice steady and as calm as possible. When it came to David, she never even attempted to give him the full truth unless it was completely necessary in an effort to protect him as much as possible, so it was fairly easy to keep her calm. And Jack...she hadn't even bothered to keep her cool with him. To be fair, neither of them had really tried to do so in their weekly to bi-weekly meetups where they drank too much beer and spilled their guts.

"There was an explosion. Someone...someone planted a bomb on your car and when you went to check it..." Clara's voice trails off as she tries to figure out how to explain the rest of it. Is there even a good way to say You were horribly burned, paralyzed, possibly deaf, blinded in one eye, and lost an arm and leg so I gave OmniCorp the okay to do this to you because there wasn't really any other option? "You were...you were hurt and this was your best chance."

Despite how much she's trying to keep from crying, she's coming close to failing miserably from the way her vision's currently blurring from the tears in her eyes. "I'm so sorry, Alex."

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Alex's face smoothes out and goes so blank it almost looks like a mask stretched to the breaking point. It's that too-calm look of someone trying to absorb something that’s bigger than he is. “I don’t remember that.”

He says it flat, knowing that doesn’t mean anything. It explains how he got in his suit, why he’s suddenly on some high-tech life support when he’d been fine last he checked. Alex almost asks how bad and decides he doesn’t want to know the details. It’s one of those rare times where suddenly he has all these questions crowding in and he doesn’t want to ask any of them. Was Clara there? She wasn’t hurt, was she? How long ago was this? And why did her voice wobble when she said “best chance”? He stands there staring down at Clara, trying to work his way through this. Car bomb. They wanted him dead. They wanted his wife and kid dead. A car bomb at home.

Someone wanted to send a message. Alex could make an educated guess who.

He swallows, mouth going dry. As if from a distance he watches as his hand comes up, hesitating before he touches Clara’s shoulder gently. She’s got that look, the one that says she’s trying really hard not to cry in front of him, in front of David, but it’s not working.

“You – you made the right call,” Alex tries to look on the bright side. “It’s just some new life support rig. Bet it’ll come off when I’m good to go.”

He seems to lean on that when, as if it’s just a matter of time when he won’t be feeling claustrophobic in some suit that he knows, instinctively, is too tight, too impossibly thin, to contain his body. He was skinny, but not that skinny. So he leans on that when like a crutch, like if he says it out loud, that’ll make it real. Just temporary. All he has to do is make it out of the Arena with his wife and he can get out of it. Go back to normal. Alex’s breathing hitches slightly, his armored fingers tightening against Clara’s shoulder.

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It's taking every ounce of self control in Clara's body to keep her from drawing away from him. Partly because his grip on her shoulder is a little too tight for comfort and partly because, no matter how many times he's seen it in the past, she hates crying in front of him.

And she can feel the sob that's clawing at her throat and is blocking the words she needs to say. She wishes she could let him live with his delusion that the suit's eventually going to come off and he'll be fine. Fuck, she wishes she could have that delusion too, because it's so much kinder than the reality of the situation. But she can't let him live with that kind of false hope, it would be too cruel. If she tells him the truth, at least, he'll be hearing it from her instead of from some stranger in the Capitol.

It briefly strikes her that this doesn't seem like a dream. Between the fact that she's never seen Alex in the silver suit and she's pretty damn sure that her subconscious doesn't hate her enough to put her through a dream where she has to explain all of this to him. Dreams where she has to beg him for forgiveness, sure, she's had plenty of those, but never one where anything like this has happened. Honestly, if it weren't for David and the whole death match thing, she could almost accept this as her new reality if it meant she'd get to have Alex back.

"It..." Clara manages to get out before a small, strangled sob comes out of her. "It isn't coming off, baby. It's part of you." Most of him, really, though she feels like that shouldn't need to be said. "We'll get through this, I promise."

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“Part of me? What’re you talking about?” Alex blurts. For a moment he actually forgets about the Hunger Games, that rush for the Cornucopia and thinking any one of those Tributes could stab him in the face, and everything seems to tunnel in on Clara, her lip quivering as she fails to choke back that sob. “...It’s temporary.”

He seems like he’s trying to convince himself more than anything. He’s managed to coast by so far by telling himself there’s no way he’d be stuck grafted in this thing like a sardine in the most fancy tin-can ever and that’s worked. So far. It wasn’t like he’d spent a lot of time conscious to think about it when he was sedated in that cradle. Alex’s fingers continue unconsciously to tighten on Clara’s shoulder, the joints in his robotic fingers responding to the signals it’s receiving from his brain. There’s no Dr. Norton to coax him down in his feed. No instant access to his transmitter. It’s just Alex and Clara in some house that looks like it’d been abandoned for decades, with a door that’s barricaded by a damn couch and windows that would be painfully easy to chuck a rock through.

His Adam’s Apple would bob nervously if he still had one.

Alex stares down at Clara and it seems as if he’s forgotten how to blink, the blood draining from his face. He wants to believe her. Really, he does. But when he looks down and entertains the idea he’s going to be stuck in this thing for months, years, and suddenly it’s a lot harder. It’s a promise he’s not sure she can keep.

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"It isn't." There really isn't a gentle way to say it. Clara still doesn't know how doctors can manage to work up the nerves to tell people that their lives as they knew them were over. "You were too..." despite her best efforts to clamp down on her sobs, another one manages to rip out of her throat, "...too injured. They brought in a specialist from the Omni Foundation and...it was either this or possibly losing you." Or worse. Though, in the end, she still lost him. Not that she's going to tell Alex that right now. Or ever, if she can help it.

Alex's grip on her shoulder finally slides from uncomfortable to kind of painful, making her wince. Clara's briefly torn on whether she should try to tough it out and hope he notices and risk possibly getting her collarbone broken, or tell him that he's hurting her and probably throw almost any chances of him touching her anytime in the near future out the window. Of course, if he were to do some actual damage to her...she can't let him live with that.

She tries to find the words, looking away from his face and instead looking down at her feet, noticing the start contrast between her heavy boots and his uncovered feet. There has to be a way to say it that won't scare him off. Something that isn't Alex, you're hurting me, because those are the exact opposite of what he needs to hear right now. "Could you not squeeze my shoulder so hard?"

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Alex blinks quickly, his hand jerking away from Clara’s shoulder with a mumbled “sorry”. Christ. Jesus Christ, she can’t be serious. Somehow he’d assumed if his face was fine – ignoring the way it was too smooth, like he’d never had a five o’clock shadow in his life – then the rest was fine, too. Suddenly she has him wondering about skin grafts and facial reconstruction, why he’s never felt anything like pins and needles in his legs. Why he hasn’t even had to take a piss. All the stuff he’d assumed would come back and now Clara is telling him it won’t.

He drops his hand to his side. One hand he thinks might still be his. There’s skin. The other one might be prosthetic. It might not be the only one. Alex’s still blinking rapidly as he struggles to adjust to the news. Can’t get out of this. If – when – they get back to Detroit, he can kiss their old life goodbye.

Alex closes his eyes. He thinks about Clara’s wince passing across her face and, this is the part he could’ve done without, the HUD brings it up in a tab as if he needs to see it again. When he opens his eyes, he’s back in Cop Mode again, because that’s the only way he knows how to deal with his world being shattered. He keeps his distance from Clara, half-turning away from her as he clears his throat, voice feeling strange. It’s easier this way.

“Doesn’t change the fact we’re stuck here. Let’s check the upstairs and see if there’s anything we can use.”

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Clara isn't sure which part breaks her heart more, the way he takes his hand off her shoulder or the fact that he's apologizing for something that isn't even his fault (and at some point, after they've made sure that they'll be safe for the time being, they need to figure out a way to test his strength. Though, right now definitely isn't the best time to mention that).

"Yeah, that's...that's what I'm saying." The only good thing about right now is that, at least, she doesn't feel like she's going to be fighting back sobs anymore for...a little while, at least.

Clara almost reaches out to grab a hold of Alex's flesh and blood hand, as if she believes that holding onto him can make her believe that any part of this is okay, or at the very least let him know that she's here for him, no matter what. She only stops is when she hears him turn away, which pulls her gaze back up to his face.

timeskip to night?

"Tools," Alex finds it's a little easier, that his voice doesn't wobble as much, if he focuses on the most immediate concerns: survival. It's not the same as roughing it back in Detroit, all the stuff he's glossed over with Clara because he didn't want her to worry, but it's a start. "Food, water. Blankets for you. Bed might be shot, but..."

Alex makes a weird gesture with his shoulders like he's trying to shrug and finds the joints don't quite work the same way he's used to: it's this strange little jiggle of his shoulder plates and he has to wonder if he even has shoulder to begin with. Alex glances at the windows. No one's tried rattling the doors yet. Alex points at the windows. The neighborhood Clara's used to, having big open windows was a selling point. Now he wishes these had bars.

"We need to get these boarded up. We do that, I think we can sleep a little easier." What he really means to say is Clara can sleep easier. Him, he's planning to stay up all night if he has to. Although looking at his wife, the way her eyes are wide and still glistening with tears, and he thinks she might not be doing much sleeping either.

Sounds good!

The feeling of someone else barreling into her drew out a panicked sound from Clara not too dissimilar to the ones she would sometimes let out if someone was tickling her too much or if Alex had scooped her up at a pool to drop her into the water. The only difference is that those situations usually had a good amount of laughter and good natured playfulness involved. And in this situation, she was worried that she was about to die.

She had no delusions about the likelihood of her survival through this Arena. She'd be lucky to make it past the first few weeks. But she hadn't expected that feeling of oh fuck, I'm going to die to pop up until at least half an hour in.

Though from the sound the other person was making, he was just as surprised as Clara was. "You okay?"

Re: Sounds good!

Guy scrambled a few feet away, settling back in a half-crouch that was almost animal-like. He looked her over to see if any weapons were visible.

She'd asked if he was okay, which...was such a new person move. No no no, not good. Not good. She looked unfamiliar, too. There were usually too many Tributes at any given time to keep track of everyone but at the very least it was possible to recognized most of them by face because of seeing them in arena footage or around the Tribute Center.

New face and she was asking if a stranger was okay after they'd barreled into her at the Cornucopia. Never. You never did that. Maybe an ally you knew wouldn't stab you (and only if you were really really sure they weren't in a panic enough to do it.)

"Don't do that, don't ever do that," he said warningly to her, his voice rising with a sort of second-hand anxiety. "You're new right? If someone runs into you at the Cornucopia, unless you know them, you don't see if they're okay. You just get up and run. Later in the arena some people are willing to be peaceful, but the beginning's always got everyone in a panic and the violent people crowded in with the more peaceful ones."

He spotted a pack nearby in the grass and picked it up, giving her a look that said he'd be nice but only if she didn't try to take it from him.

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Clara had no clue how she had managed to miss that pack and there's a little part of her that toyed with the thought of trying to take it from him. Except for the fact that it probably wouldn't end well for her if she tried and there's a huge difference between thinking about it and actually acting on it. Instead of acting on her impulse, she splayed her hands out in front of her to signal to him that, no, she wasn't going to attack him.

"I'll keep that in mind for next time," she said, trying to keep from showing how scared she actually was. Which was quite a bit, if she was going to be completely honest with herself. And from the way his voice was rising, he seemed to be in a similar state. "But since I don't think either of us are going to be attacking each other, are you okay?"

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Considering Guy had only found the bag by practically tripping over it, she couldn't be blamed. The fog made it difficult to see more than just a few feet ahead.

"I'm fine. This is my fourth. I'm used to it."

It would have only have been his third but he was one of the unlucky ones that had been chosen for the mini arena.

He reached into the bag, blindly reaching around and found a can of some kind of soup. He tossed it to her. A freebie for the new person.

"Here, I'm usually good on sponsors." Between his ability to hunt and scavenge, he usually ate okay most arenas. "Now, you need to get out of here. Put some distance between yourself and the Cornucopia, okay? Find shelter, find what you can to use as a weapon."